Lost Letters
by TomFoolery
Summary: When he accidentally finds a ring in his aunt's bedroom that belonged to his mother, Harry is transported back to the remains of Godric's Hollow and uncovers lost love letters that James wrote to Lily. What follows is a trip through time and through love.
1. Two Discoveries

**Lost Letters: Chapter One  
Two Discoveries **

Harry's summer was still young, but was already reaching an unbearable pitch in spite of the warnings of certain Order members to the Dursleys. They were civil enough, to be fair, but he felt almost driven into the ground by the amount of chores he was given each day and the contemptuous stares he knew they gave him when his back was turned. Uncle Vernon had taken a rather quaint approach to it and reminded Harry daily that:

"They can't blame me for wanting to put you to work. It keeps you out of trouble. Even in _your _world," he spat as politely as he could force himself "surely they make troublesome lads work."

Harry grimaced at his comment but knew better than to answer back. It was simply on the safer side of things not to go about waging war with Uncle Vernon, no matter what extent he went to to get a rise out of him. Harry was beginning to get the sneaking suspicion that rather than throw him out, which would incur the wrath of the people from "his world", as Uncle Vernon called it, he was trying to force him to leave on his own accord. He refused to give the fat oaf the satisfaction of knowing his comments bit into him, and instead smiled and tried to think of all the times his uncle had made an idiot out of himself as he attempted to tune him out.

"What are you smiling at boy?"

Harry gave him a questioning look, indicating to Uncle Vernon that he was skating on thin ice and was close to advising him that he _would _go post a letter right then and there when his uncle quickly righted his statement.

"I meant, what are you smiling at Harry?" he said, coating his voice with a sweetness that didn't suit him "Our bedroom needs cleaning, surely you can get on that?" he beamed, still grinning much too widely.

"Right on it Uncle Vernon..." Harry muttered between his clenched teeth.

In a way, cleaning every square inch of the house had been a slight blessing for him, for it kept him away from the family that would have united to destroy him had it not been that they were frightened that "those peculiar people" might turn up and hex them all into screeching flamingos. But it was hard work, and when he was alone, his thoughts turned to the events of last year, Sirius, the Department of Mysteries...

He trudged up to the top of the stairs, stopping at the bathroom to collect a few supplies before arriving at his aunt and uncle's bedroom with a slight sigh to indicate a horrible distending grief welling up inside him. He did his best to think of housework.

After this, there was only the attic to clean and then he would be stuck in his room for the rest of the summer, allowed out likely only to use the bathroom, eat an occasional meal, and trim the yard when it grew too shabby. He laughed aloud at thinking that he ought to be grateful for the cleaning, for it staved off his boredom somewhat. He was thankful to be cleaning, yes, that was a funny thought indeed.

"Dust mites and dirty sheets can't be that amusing. Be sure you get the dust around the floorboards." Uncle Vernon called from the hallway.

"Floorboards... right." he muttered to himself.

He had cleaned for quite a time, determined to do such a perfect job that they couldn't find cause for complaint, but then again, knowing his aunt and uncle, they could find something. Halfway recalling the cleaning he had done at Grimmauld Place with Sirius, he knelt down on the floor with a rag, sweeping the dust away from the floorboards as Uncle Vernon had so _politely _requested when he saw a slight reddish glint.

He looked at it very carefully, trying to assure himself that it was not a trick of the sun before deciding that there really was something stuck between two boards in the corner of the room. He glanced towards the door to make sure no one was peering in at him and pulled as hard as he could on one board, lifting it just barely enough to sneak his other hand in to grasp whatever it was that was there.

After he pulled his scraped and scratched hand out from between the floorboards, he was surprised to find that he clutched in his hand a small gold ring with a little red stone set in it. He found it so odd: Aunt Petunia must have never known it was there, for it was not like her to throw away jewelry of any kind. Perhaps it was a gift Uncle Vernon had been hiding from her, and he was about to rush to put it back when he stopped for some reason.

He played it between his fingers delicately. He was no expert on the subject, but it just didn't seem like something his aunt might wear. The ring slipped over the little finger on his right hand and he felt himself jerked forward and falling into darkness.

For a brief instant, he was too frightened to scream and all too suddenly he landed smack on his face onto a hard and unforgiving floor. He could hear birds chattering above him and he stood up sorely, nursing his elbow where it had hit the floor and readjusting his glasses which had been knocked sideways from the fall.

"Where was he?..."

He looked around and would have said he stood somewhere between a house and the outdoors. He was standing in a house, yes, but two walls to his left were missing and there was grass growing into the room in which he stood. Birds were nesting in the lamp overhead, and a pair of squirrels darted past him and out through the two missing walls.

The house appeared to have been partially demolished and then forgotten to everyone except nature. It was a beautiful combination really. There was only a broken upturned couch on the side of one wall that seemed to have some kind of animals nesting in it and a splintered little table thrown against the wall to his left. There were holes in the ceiling above him and he could see the sky shining brightly above.

He had just been thinking that whoever lived there might want to consider getting another decorator when he heard a pair of sparrows fighting in a room up the stairs and heard a loud thump as one bird likely ran into something, and then... it was the oddest thing, a song began to play. It sounded like a music box; it was a soft and shrill little song that was barely audible over the dueling birds.

He looked at the stairs and came to the conclusion that they would likely be secure enough to travel up. He looked around to be sure that there was no one watching and felt a small smile in his heart that he hadn't felt in the longest time. It was wonderful to feel unobserved and alone to bask in his solace.

As he reached the foot of the stairs, he noticed that there were pictures hanging from the walls on the stairway, hanging askew with the glass covering shattered on many of them, yet the images in the mauled frames moved. This had been a house belonging to magical people.

"What had happened here?" he wondered.

It appeared that the place had been the scene of a horrible crime or battle, or something to that general effect. As he climbed the stairs and stooped in to look at the closest picture and felt like someone had kicked the air out of him. It was a picture depicting a man and woman on their wedding day, a handsome best man stood to the right and a man with scruffy black hair was stuffing cake into the mouth of a laughing woman with bright green eyes and long auburn hair...


	2. The Jewelry Box

**Lost Letters: Chapter Two  
The Jewelry Box**  


He felt his heart drop into his stomach and he gasped and almost fell against the wall. He was in his house, his home at Godric's Hollow. That was the reason that there was so little left to the house, the reason for the broken pictures and furniture. How had he come here? 

He looked down at the ring that he still held in his grip and examined it more closely. There was nothing special or phenomenal about it in any way. He looked around the house and was filled with a terrible sadness. This is where it had happened, where they had been murdered. He looked over to what he assumed was once the front door and could almost hear his father fighting valiantly and losing all the same.

And here he stood on the stairs, the very stairs Voldemort had darted up to attack his mother. Silent tears began to flood down his face and he felt as though he were being stabbed in the heart. Why had he come here?

He found himself going up the stairs without much awareness as to his actions. He was absorbed in the photographs, they seemed to watch his footfall and their eyes seemed to travel with him as he came to the top of the stairs.

The sweet melody of what he was certain was a music box continued to ring throughout the hallway as he approached the room he was certain it was in. The door was hanging on its hinges and the sky hung brightly above from a large hole, for there was no roof covering that part of the house.

He walked in and was almost engulfed in emotion. Their bed was still made, or at least what he could see of it. A huge section of the roof had caved in over it and much of the room was covered in rubble.

He carefully neared the singing music box and was a bit surprised to see that it was not open. He reached his hand out to it and the instant it made contact with the box, the song stopped.

As he opened it, he discovered that it was a jewelry box, but that there was no jewelry in it that he could see, only a stack of letters. He took the topmost one in his hand and it was still sealed, and oddly enough, was addressed to his Aunt Petunia... he slowly tore it open and read.

_Dear Petunia,_

We haven't spoken much these last few years. I miss you so much. Did you get the ring I sent you? I charmed it so that whenever you put it on, you would appear in my living room, as you would know if you got my last letter, and I charmed my jewelry box that you gave me when we were girls to sing so that I would know when you came. Maybe you've just been too busy, I can understand that. I hear that you're going to have a baby! I am too, I found out not too long ago. I don't know what else to say to you Petunia, other than I want so badly to be your friend and sister again. Please don't send this letter back, you mean the world to me.

Love,  
Lily

Harry scowled at the letter in his hand. His aunt had probably sent the letter back, and thrown the ring his mother had given her on the floor years ago and forgot about it. He hated his aunt so much at that moment. She had always been more humane than his uncle, but she was fowl, every last bit of her...

He grasped the ring firmly in his hand and felt a bit delighted that he held something of his mother's. He had several possessions from his father, the Marauder's Map and the Invisibility Cloak, but nothing of his mother's: until just then. He looked back at the jewelry box and saw a set of pictures with moving figures in them and grasped at them hungrily. He had viewed the photo album Hagrid had given him in his first year so many times that the cover had worn down, and any new pictures of them would be a treasure.

The first one made him smile, but he had already seen it. It was an image of the two of them, dancing in front of a huge fountain, looking too delightfully in love for their own good. It was one of Harry's favorites; he even had it in a frame on his bedside table.

The others were new to him. There was a picture of his mother holding a cat that looked remarkably like Crookshanks, another of his father and mother together on a broom, his father grinning hugely and his mother looking absolutely terrified, another of the two of them along with Sirius and a woman Harry didn't know around a huge feasting table with their glasses raised in a toast to something, and the last one was of James with his mother on his shoulders as she picked a flower from a high tree branch. They were so beautiful...

After the emotional high of seeing new photos of his parents had worn off, his eyes were again drawn to the little jewelry box.

There were more letters in it, but they were not in envelopes, they were just folded up bits of parchment like one would pass during a class or leave on the downstairs table for whoever came down in the morning to see...

He picked up the one on top and opened it.

_Lily!_

I there's something I need to say-

There was a jolt behind his navel and Harry began to feel himself being pulled into the letter like another Portkey, off to a destination in the past...


	3. A Short First Kiss

**Lost Letters: Chapter Three  
A Short First Kiss**

He fell flat on his face into a snowy embankment, casting his glasses and the small letter off into the unwelcoming blanket of snow. Night was growing quickly on the horizon and he fumbled for his glasses, put them on, and frowned.

He was standing in the center of Hogmeade near the great fountain with the naked dancing angels. Harry forced back a pained laugh when he thought that at least they were likely to be colder than he was.

He knew this fountain well. Not only was it the place where he, Ron, and Hermione would come after a day of touring the village to wait for the carriages arrive, but it was the very same fountain where his parents had their photograph taken.

It had grown so dark by that point that she was only visible by the light of the ominous moon. He looked around and saw no one else but her. Immediately he felt a bit foolish. How was he going to explain to her why he was walking around in Hogsmeade in the middle of winter at night with no coat and no reason for being there?

She seemed to be walking straight towards him. He began to feel a slight panic until she came close enough for him to make out who she was. It was most definitely his mother. What was she doing walking around Hogsmeade by herself when it was too cold outside to think?

"Mum!" he shouted.

His voice didn't echo through the small square and she didn't seem to hear him.

"Mum!" he shouted again.

Again nothing. She sat down on the side of the fountain and cupped her chin in her hands as she kneeled over. Was she waiting for someone?

"Mum?" he asked softly, beginning to understand that she would not answer.

She couldn't see him or hear him. He was certain of that fact when he walked over to her and reached his hand out to touch her. Nothing…

He watched her for a few minutes as the shadows grew longer and longer on her face from the fast approaching night. He was reminded of his first year when he found the Mirror of the Erised. He could see her and he could even smell her light perfume, but she didn't see him there and he couldn't touch her.

He continued to study her for another few minutes; his heart was grieving to touch her and his body was starting to go numb from the cold when he heard a chilling and echoing howl reverberate through the night. It was a werewolf calling to the full moon drooping above.

The howling call was returned by his mother's scream. He turned to her and was terrified for her well-being. He could not defend her in any way and felt completely helpless as he watched her topple backwards into the near-frozen fountain in surprise, slamming her head into the stone side as she fell.

She then screamed out in pain from the icy water gnawing though her clothing to get at her skin. She tried to stand in the knee-deep water but screamed in pain and fell backwards again. He wanted to help her out but instead ran over to the side of the fountain feeling wholly helpless to come to his own mother's aid.

He jumped back in shock when he saw a figure coming from the forest straight at the fountain where Harry stood watching his mother gasp in pain from fear and the cold water. It did no good but Harry began to scream at her to get away, to run, to pull out her wand, or to do anything, but she of course did not hear him, nor did she seem to see than animal. She was trying desperately to pull herself to the side of the fountain and was sobbing in agony. The figure bounded closer and through the pale and luminous moonlight Harry began to recognize that it was not a werewolf, but something else.

Harry felt a glimmer of hope when he spied that the animal had a pair of antlers and a stag-like leaping gait.

"Prongs…" he whispered.

The stag was at the side of the fountain in what seemed like no time and Harry's assumption had been correct. In one graceful leap the stag shifted from its lithe form into the image of his father and skidded to a halt beside the fountain's edge and pulled her steady.

"Potter?..." she chattered weakly.

"What are you doing here? It's not exactly the right time of the year to go swimming…" he said quickly as he held her in a standing position.

The howl rang through the village again, only that time more clearly and she whimpered at the sound and James looked vigilantly towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

"Come on. Hurry." James ordered bluntly.

Harry watched in horror as she tried to stand well enough to walk but she seemed either too frightened or too frozen to comply with his father's command.

"Please Evans…" he pleaded. "Hurry…"

"I…I can't!..." she wailed in pain.

James' face sunk and another howl resounded menacingly through the moonlit night. Without really seeming to think, he lifted Lily into his arms and took off as fast as possible to the rear entrance of Honeydukes.

Harry followed in a panicked confusion as he watched James tap the knob to the entrance with his wand. The door swung open and he carried Lily inside and set her down near a tiny fireplace and Harry just barely had enough time to squeeze in after them before he shut the door.

Without another word, James stripped off the cloak he was wearing, lit a fire in with a simple incantation, and stooped down to throw his cloak over her.

She gave him a questioning look but did not speak.

He pointed his wand at her again and whispered "Sicco." Lily seemed to come to her senses after having been magically dried.

"Where are we?" she hissed.

"We're in the cellar at Honeydukes. Are you ok?"

"_We are trespassing!_" she snapped, her eyes again growing wide with fear.

"So you would rather take a stroll with a fully grown werewolf?" he retorted.

She seemed to again come to her senses and returned back into her silence for a moment while she thought.

"What are you doing in Hogsmeade anyway?" she asked huffily.

"I was minding my own business, breaking rules as usual. You?" James asked accusingly.

Harry couldn't help but notice how much the dynamics between them had changed ever since he had seen them in their fifth year. His father had been, to put it lightly, an arrogant prat, and his mother had seemed to loathe him so much that she hadn't seemed to listen to a word he said. But they seemed to be, well, _older_, though they didn't look much older than the last time he had seen them. How old _were_ they?

"I just… I just came to think. It's hard to think anything at night with that Trelawney girl snoring like a mating pig." She replied defensively.

"What about?" James asked.

His interest seemed genuine, and she seemed to pick up on that and gave him another one of her curious looks before answering.

"What do you want me to say? _You_?" She asked sarcastically.

"Well, if you want to…" he replied slyly with a half-grin broadening on his face. He quickly added "…no really, what's bothering you?" when the look on her face suggested that she would rather eat a laundry load of dirty socks than say anything to cement that fact.

"Well, loads of stuff. It's trivial though: surely nothing the prominent Potter would want to hear about…" she said casually, beginning to rise to her feet.

"Try me." He replied, almost seemingly offended by her last statement.

She raised her eyebrow skeptically but slowly sat back down next to him.

"I have no idea what I am going to do with my life."

"And?"

"Well, that's it."

"You call that _loads of stuff_?" James asked in modest amusement. "Everyone here wonders what they are going to do with their lives, well, except for maybe Percival Wood, he's going to play for England and have loads of Quidditch-playing babies. But really, I wonder what I'm going to do too…"

She didn't seem comforted by his statement at all, but she did laugh.

"I just made you laugh…" he said smiling hugely. "Who knew Lily Evans could smile? Especially at something that came from the mouth of an 'arrogant, bullying toerag'…"

"Who called you an arrogant bullying toerag?" she asked, seemingly finding the title amusing.

"_You_ did two years ago." he answered quickly.

"Well, I called you a lot of things..." she said with a shrug of her shoulders. "You've gotten better though. I'll admit that…." She said, her voice trailing off into thought.

"Oh! Lily Evans just admitted she was _wrong_…" he gasped, clutching his hand to his chest very dramatically and pretending like he was going to faint from shock.

"Would you keep it down?" Lily hissed, nervously eyeing the doorway. "And I didn't admit that I was wrong, I only admitted that you have gotten better…"

"Whatever you say Evans…" he said with a casual roll of his eyes.

She opened her mouth like she was about to say something and he raised his eyebrows at her and she seemed to think the better of it. She laughed again, only her laugh was more warm and cheery than it had been the last time and James' smile widened and he leaned back comfortably on his elbows and looked over to the fire he had lit in the small fireplace: he was drenched in a look of satisfaction.

"So what are _you_ doing out at night?" she questioned again.

"Breaking every bloody rule I can. Are you going to put me in detention?" he asked doubtfully.

She snickered and rolled her eyes back at him and turned to stare at the fire. James watched her for a few moments, searching for any sign of wanting to communicate further.

"You know-" They both spoke at the same time and looked back over at each other with shy smiles.

"What?" they both asked, again simultaneously.

"I was going to say you could call me James."

"I was going to say you could call me Lily."

They spoke again at the same time but laughed at each other's strange new ability to seemingly read each other's thoughts. An awkward silence began to form in the frigid Honeydukes cellar and Harry watched on, beginning to feel slightly embarrassed for intruding on such a personal scene, and between his parents nonetheless.

"I really like you Lily. I don't know if you know that…"

"How could I _not_ know that?" she asked sarcastically, giving James a look that told him she thought he was an idiot.

"Well, I just thought that you might think I was just teasing you or something… trying to give you a hard time. But I _do_ really like you. You're just special…"

She jerked her head back in slight surprise at the seriousness of his tone and her face began to soften. She looked at him in a very different way (Harry couldn't help but notice) as she watched him watch the fire.

James seemed uncomfortable, as though he had just poured out his deepest innermost secret and had been laughed at and scorned for it. At long last he looked back to Lily and their eyes locked.

Their faces began to grow closer together and Lily pulled James' cloak closer to her as she leaned forward. Their lips touched for a split second before a crash was heard in the next room. James jumped back with a wide grin on his face and whispered:

"Time to go."

He grabbed her hand and they ducked through the passageway that led back to Hogwarts from the cellar, Harry clinging tightly to their heels.

Once safely back inside the castle they ran the length of the distance back to the common room.

"Well I never…" the Fat Lady began.

"Dragon's claw!" they both cried at the same time and they slipped through the portrait hole with Harry just behind and slightly out of breath.

Once inside, Lily looked back over to James and laughed.

"Goodnight Potter."

"Goodnight Lily."

"Goodnight James."

"Goodnight Evans."

"Stop it! I'm going to bed…" she laughed.

James and Harry watched her climb the stairs to the girls' dormitory and disappear through the door. James waited a few moments and then did a strange sort of gleeful victory dance.

Harry couldn't see what he was so happy about. When he had kissed Cho he had felt no such emotion. But then again, his mother hadn't been bawling her eyes out over her dead boyfriend either…

Just then Sirius entered through the portrait hole looking scratched and worn indeed.

"What are you so cheery about?" he snapped.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you…" James replied happily.

"You're probably right. Moony isn't exactly easy to handle by myself you know…" he said, sounding a bit irritated.

"You'll get over it…" James said, still making victorious gestures to himself.

"Right… 'night then Prongs." He said, cocking his head to the side before trudging up the stairs to the boys' dorm.

James flopped down in a high-backed chair facing the smoldering fire in the fire place, whipped out his wand, gave it a flick, and in an instant a quill and parchment appeared. Harry barely had time to marvel at his father's skills with a wand before James began to scribble a note down.

_Lily!_

There's something I need to say-"

Harry felt a jerk behind his navel and he was again swirling back into darkness and into his own time.  



	4. The Agreement

**Lost Letters: Chapter Four  
The Agreement**

Harry found himself thrown back onto the floor of his parents' bedroom, dazed as to what he had just witnessed. He had never felt so happy and depressed at the same time.

He sighed a slight laugh and began to wonder how he had gotten pulled into the letter in the first place. He hadn't gotten to read what the letter had said, for he had carelessly left it in the snowdrift in his haste to talk to his mother.

They had been so lucid it was in fact almost unreal. He craved to know the content of the rest of the letters still lying in his mother's jewelry box, so he carefully side-stepped the huge gaping hole in the floor and reached for another one. With some uncertainty as to what might happen a second time, he picked up the next letter and opened it.

"_Ha! I knew it-_"

His instincts rightly told him to brace himself again, for there was another jerk behind his navel like he was being dragged off a stage with a cane and another scene of swirling darkness engulfed him.

He slammed into a smooth surface and stepped back, rubbing the knot he had just created on his forehead. He knew instantly that he was on the Hogwarts' Express. He was in a roomy compartment with two girls he didn't know and was looking around for a sign of anyone familiar when just the right person came in.

"Ew! Sirius Black!" squealed one of the girls in a high-pitched voice.

Harry turned and to his delight saw his godfather standing lazily in the doorway with a bored but stately look on his face. At her comment, he sneered and rolled his eyes.

"Ew! Sirius Black!" he mimicked in the same oddly high-pitched voice, shooting the girl a wink and blowing her a short kiss. "Have either of you seen James?" he asked impatiently.

The girl who had spoken seemed to be at a loss for words from being addressed by Sirius and the other one went red in the face and let out a shrill and nervous giggle and it forced Harry to smile. He had heard of his godfather's charm with girls, but he had never really witnessed it firsthand.

Sirius cocked his head to the side and scowled. He knocked twice on the doorframe to the compartment and strolled off.

Both girls sighed and were going into a hushed discussion about how they would plan out their wedding with Sirius and several other things Harry was certain Sirius would love to hear just as he slipped out of the compartment to follow his godfather. He walked just a few footsteps behind down the long train corridor, pausing as his godfather popped his head into several other compartments in the hunt for Harry's father.

At the very back of the train he found James sitting alone in silence and Harry felt a pleasurable jolt of delight at the sight of his father's face again. James looked entirely lost unto himself and dreaming in a world that neither Sirius nor Harry could understand.

"What's got into you Prongs? I thought you'd be happy to leave school for a change…" Sirius said casually, a slight hint of disappointment in his voice at finding his best friend in such a mood.

"Did you ever wonder what you were going to do after you graduated?" James asked, a slight frown on his face.

"Nope." Sirius replied gleefully as he plopped down next to James.

There was silence for a few moments and Sirius scratched his head and sighed.

"When are you going to give up on her? She doesn't want you…" Sirius said exasperatedly and a bit harsher than Harry was sure he meant.

"She kissed me the other night, it was-" Sirius choked. "Don't interrupt me, seriously. It's a really long story and you'd probably be mad if you knew it all, but she did, and I did, and I don't know…"James said, glancing back at his best friend to try and discern an opinion from his face.

"Well, doesn't mean she's going to drop to her knees and profess her undying love and devotion to you. She's a girl mate, they don't know what they want." He replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

"You're probably right." James said, forcing himself to smile though he clearly didn't feel like smiling.

"So she really snogged you huh? Who would have thought?" Sirius pondered aloud, again scratching his head.

"I know I wouldn't have thought it…Stop scratching your head! You look like you have fleas!"

"I think I do have fleas…" Sirius laughed.

"Good to know. You've been running around with Moony too much." James smirked.

"Well, yeah. You know what you need? Fresh air…"

Sirius flicked his wand and the window ripped open, allowing the angry winter winds to coming stabbing through the compartment. The letter was ripped from Harry's hand before he was even aware what had happened and was gone and lost into the snow of the English countryside. He hadn't gotten to read that one either…

"Padfoot! What _are_ you thinking?" James snapped as he flicked his own wand and the window slapped back shut.

"Give up on her mate. You're going to hate yourself later if you don't…" Sirius said, a very stern demeanor crossing his face.

James raised his eyebrows and snorted without looking up or saying anything in response. Sirius shook his head and they sat in silence for the next twenty or so minutes until the train began to draw to a slow stop.

As they collected their things on Platform 9 and 3/4 and found family members and exchanged greetings, James and Sirius, along with an invisible Harry, were about to follow James' mother out into King's Cross Station when James suddenly stopped and began to walk in the opposite direction.

Sirius, Harry's grandmother (who he was busy trying to study), and Harry turned to see where he was going.

He walked briskly in the direction of a certain red-headed girl with a sense of determination he hadn't ever felt before, in spite of the way he pretended to act. She was gathering up her trunks and was close to dropping one on herself when James caught it with one hand and pulled it off the train and heaved it onto a luggage trolley for her. Harry approached the two just in time to hear:

"Hi Potter." She said it so casually with a smile on her face as she scanned the crowd, seemingly looking for a relation to take her home for the holidays.

"Hi Lily, can I talk to you?" James asked as a slight flush appeared in his cheeks.

She looked over in surprise at a blushing James Potter and replied simply "Sure."

"Um, last night, I…well…"

Lily cocked her head to the side, trying to figure out what he was saying, or at least trying to say.

"Well, I was there too Potter. I remember…" she said, shaking her head at him with a smile that revealed nothing. "Speaking of which, I never did give you your cloak back, and I never did thank you…"

"Well, keep the thanks and the cloak." He said quickly. "Well, the cloak is a loan... but look Lily, I wrote you a note, but I don't know if you got it and I don't have your home address or anything, so I'll just ask here. Um, will you…"

"Yes _James_, I will…" she said with a pout to cover up a shy smile.

"Will you be my girlfriend- wait… what?"

"I got your letter." She explained simply. "That's a very persuasive owl you have, by the way…"

"Lily! Come on! Your father is waiting in the car!"

Lily blushed furiously and tried to hide her face from James beneath her long curtain of red hair.

"I'm coming mum!"

"Before you go, are you serious?"

"What kind of a question is that?" she asked with a slight laugh.

"An honest one."

"Yes _Potter_, I guess I am. You have changed more than you realize…"

"Lily! Stop toying around with boys and come on!" the woman shouted again.

Harry couldn't help but notice how much she looked like she wanted to sink into the cold ground and disappear from the embarrassment of her mother yelling so loudly.

"I have to go James," she protested "so I'll see you after the holidays…"

"One more thing." He said, pulling out his wand and muttering something under his breath in a single stroke into his free hand.

"What's that?" Lily asked of the small shining orb glistening in James' hand.

"Take it." He said.

"_Lily! Hurry it along!_"

Without seeming to think, she snatched the shimmering sphere from his hand and jumped back like she had received a static shock and stared at him in surprise.

"What was that?" she asked hurriedly.

"Well, what _is_ that? It's my heart Lily… Merry Christmas, but the way…"

Harry could not judge the look on his mother's face in that instant. It was some kind of impression of surprise and complete shock mingled with an intense interest. James looked back at her expectedly.

"I…I…"

"**_Lily! We would like to eat Christmas dinner before New Year's!_**"

"Let me guess… you have to go?" asked James quickly.

"Yeah…" she replied, her face still glowing red from embarrassment and surprise.

"Well, what's your address?" he asked quickly.

"57 Pennyfield Ln. If you send me post, the owl should be able to find it from that… I'll see you…" she smiled sheepishly.

James waved and she waved back and as soon as James turned back to where his mother and Sirius were standing, Harry saw an impossibly wide grin grow on his face. Lily Evans had agreed to be his girlfriend and he hadn't even had to force a Love Potion down her throat or blackmail her or anything…

"Wow, she talked to you…" Sirius seemed impressed with a casual grin on his face. "Me and your mum were taking bets to see if she'd sock you or not…" he said sarcastically.

"Is that the girl you always talk about?" his mother asked, craning her neck to get a better view of Lily leaving with a rather impatient-looking woman with the same red hair.

"So what _was_ that all about?" Sirius asked once they were through the barrier into King's Cross.

"An exercise in being relentless…" James said with a smile.

Harry followed the three of them back to the same house he had come from not even a few hours ago, only it was still intact and not rotting away into nature like it had never been there.

Seeing it from the outside was an odd feeling. It was completely draped in thick trees and was barely visible until they were nearly inside the door.

He followed his father up the stairs, skipping two at a time and into a spacious room on the right-hand side of the hallway. He quickly scribbled "57 Pennyfield Ln." onto a spare bit of parchment and began to write:

"_Ha! I knew it-_"

Harry knew that his time in that memory had drawn to a close when James picked up the quill and sure enough, after he had written those very words, the all-too-familiar jerking sensation seized him again, and he was pulled back into his own time.


	5. It's Just a Bloody Date!

**Lost Letters: Chapter Five**  
It's Just a Bloody Date

Harry fell with a thud onto the crumbling floor and lay motionless for a few moments. It had been odd to watch his mother and father like that. He was amazed in a way that his mother had agreed to date him. He knew that they would eventually end up together, or else he wouldn't be in existence, but it was still odd to him considering what he had witnessed in Snape's Pensieve in the previous year.

He looked again to the jewelry box and without thinking, grabbed another letter and quickly opened it, subconsciously bracing for the lurching feeling he knew was going to come.

"_Lily, I am so sorry-_

He felt himself being ripped from the present and tossed again into a memory of the past. His head slammed into another hard glass pane but he did not find himself on the Knight Bus. He was in Honeydukes and there were students swarming all around him, picking candies and sweets from the bins, laughing, and generally acting as students do.

He looked around for anyone he recognized and to his delight he quickly spied his mother's deep auburn hair and hurried over to her, unaware in the mayhem of the swirling mass of students that he had dropped the letter.

"It is way too crowded in here!" she shouted over the din of laughter.

Harry looked around to see who she was talking to and immediately spied his father trying to squeeze past a few students to get closer to her.

"Do you want to get out of here?" he shouted back to her.

She screwed up her face and shot James a rather disgusting look like he has just said something suggestive.

"No I don't want any beer!" she shouted back, obviously having misheard James' statement, which made Harry snicker.

"No!" said James laughing. "I asked if you wanted to leave here!" he yelled just as a girl hit him in the back of the head with a box of Every Flavor Beans.

"What!" Lily shouted, still unable to hear him properly.

James finally pushed his way past the rampaging students and grabbed onto Lily's wrist and guided her from the shop.

"What was that you said about beer?" Lily asked, completely bewildered.

"I asked- oh nevermind. Did you think I wanted to get you drunk on our first date or something?"

"Well, it is _you_…" she said laughingly. "Oh, and since when is this a date? I thought it was just a Hogsmeade trip…"

"Well, then I suppose it's not a date then…" he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Everywhere is so crowded," she said, clearly trying to change the subject "I never knew Hogwarts had so many students… let alone so many immature students…" she said reproachfully, eyeing two boys who each had a girl sitting on their shoulders that were chicken fighting on the edge of the fountain.

James watched the students playing on the fountain's edge with a wistful look, clearly wanting to join them, but looked back over to Lily.

"Well, that place just opened up a month ago I think." He replied, pointing to a tiny little shop hidden behind a row of short, stubby trees.

"Madame Puddifoot's?" Lily questioned. "Yeah, sure, why not?"

They walked into the little tea shop and looked around suspiciously. Harry slinked in just behind them and also glanced about the room warily. The name of Madame Puddifoot's held bad connotations with him, for he remembered all too well the scene with Cho back in February.

"It looks like a flamingo threw up in here." Lily remarked bluntly.

James eyed the abundance of pink and seemed to be thinking the same thing.

"Well, at least there aren't that many people here. It would be worse at the Three Broomsticks or at the Tipsy Tavern."

"Fair point." Lily remarked and they sat down in a small booth next to the window facing the fountain, and Harry snuck over to a table just behind them to be able to watch and listen.

"What can I get for you m'dears?" asked Madame Puddifoot, who Harry couldn't help but notice was a lot thinner than when Harry had last seen her.

"I'll take a coffee with two sugars please." Lily said politely.

"I'll have the same." James answered, not even looking over to her.

They sat in a comfortable silence for a little while as they waited for their coffee to arrive. They watched out from the window as students played in the crisp late winter air from the comforts of a steamy little coffee shop until at last their coffee arrived.

"Here you are. Let me know if you need anything else."

"Thanks." They both replied in unison.

As Lily was reaching over for the cream, she knocked her cup of scalding hot coffee into James' lap, causing him to jump in pain.

"Yow!" James howled.

"Oh!" Lily cried "I am so sorry. Let me-"

She didn't even finish her sentence before she began to try and wipe the hot coffee from his lap, her face growing a deeper and deeper shade of crimson as she scrubbed his robes with the little tea towel sitting on the edge of the table.

It was James' turn to blush furiously. Harry laughed hard at what he said next.

"Are you trying to get fresh with me Evans? I thought you said this wasn't a date…"

Lily jumped back in mortification, realizing she had just been scrubbing his lap. Harry began to feel weak from laughing so hard and was grateful that he was a void to the real world around him, but he also felt embarrassed for his mother.

"I-I-I…" she began, her face reddening to the likeness of a tomato.

"I'll be back. I'm just going to the bathroom…" he said, blushing deeply himself.

Lily stood there white as a ghost and thankfully she didn't seem to be aware that the few people who were in the shop were pointing and snickering at the scene they had just witnessed. Harry could sense that his father was embarrassed for his mother too, but for what happened next, James clearly had his own problems to be embarrassed about.

As he was walking to the bathroom, he wasn't paying much attention to exactly where he was walking because he was trying so hard not to laugh, and he slammed face first into the pole at the end of the bar.

Everyone who had been staring at Lily turned to see James hit the floor. He stood up very self-consciously and Lily shot him a look of humiliation which he thankfully didn't see. Harry watched with awkward laughter as James went into the bathroom and shut the door.

His mother stood by the abandoned table for a few moments before she tried to clean up the bit of coffee that had spilled onto the floor. Only then did Madame Puddifoot seem to notice that anything had happened at all and rushed over to Lily, scolding her for trying to clean up the mess when she could take care of it.

Harry watched her step back, refusing to stop apologizing for the mess she had made despite Madame Puddifoot telling her that it was alright. She continued to watch her clean up the mess for a moment before turning to the bathroom door. She walked over cautiously, as though afraid the door would burst open and was slowly about to knock on it, seemingly to ask if he was alright when James suddenly opened the door, slamming her hard in the face.

She squealed in pain and grabbed her face. The look on James' face was one of absolute horror. Harry knew that it was clear that his intention hadn't been to walk her around Hogsmeade and beat the tar out of her and embarrass her, but that was exactly what was happening.

"Are you alright! I am so sorry-" he gasped as Lily continued to clutch her face. "Let me see…" he gently pulled her hand away to expose her quickly bruising nose and cheeks.

Her nose was gushing out blood and James carefully tried to keep it from dripping on her with his hand. She was very near the point of tears and he tried to embrace her in a soft hug, but she seemed to go faint when she saw exactly how much blood was pouring out into James' hand.

"Hey, it's going to be ok. I've broken my nose loads of times. We'll just have to get you back to Hogwarts…"

"But you play Quidditch you idiot. You practically sign a piece of paper stating that you want your nose broken…" she wailed.

James reached into his pocket and tossed a galleon onto the bar and looked down at Lily who was still silently sobbing on his shoulder.

"Come on…" she let go of her to grab her purse sitting still in the little booth where the coffee had been spilled and a few napkins from the table, and then helped her walk out of the shop.

Harry followed quickly behind and trailed them to a small bench beneath a secluded tree.

He handed her the napkins and she began to gingerly wipe the blood from her face, looking disgusted and distraught as tears continued to pour down.

"I didn't mean to hit you in the face… I am so sorry." He pleaded.

She gave him a pained half-smile and said "Well, I did pour hot coffee in your lap. I guess I had it coming. I am so sorry about-" she cut off, too embarrassed to speak further on the subject of accidentally groping him.

He snickered. "It's ok. Happens all the time…"

"Really?" she sniffed.

"Well, no… do you want to catch one of the early carriages back to Hogwarts? Your face is looking pretty-"

"Don't say it." She laughed through her tears.

"Ok. I won't. Come on."

He grabbed her things and helped her to her feet and she smiled weakly at him. They were walking back to Hogsmeade station when they passed a group of very unpleasant people indeed, people that not only Harry recognized and loathed, but people that James more than obviously did too.

"Nice purse Potter." Snape sneered at the small bag in James' hand.

Harry looked anxiously back over to his father, unsure of what James would do. Surely he wouldn't start a fight right then and there with his mother standing nearby?

"Thanks…" he snapped back with a sarcastic and biting tone.

It clearly was taking everything he had to restrain himself from whipping out his wand and hexing the lot of them. Harry looked at his mother and she seemed impressed that James had contained himself so well.

Just as he was helping her into one of the carriages, Remus, Sirius, and Peter appeared from Zonko's, loaded down with packages.

"Hey, where are you two going? The day just started!" Sirius called out.

"We're going back to Hogwarts…" James called back.

Sirius eyed Lily's still darkening face and shouted "What'd you beat her up for?"

Lily rolled her eyes and was about to tell Sirius off when James motioned to her to sit down and not strain herself. Harry climbed into the carriage and sat on the opposite side of them. Lily had curled up in James' arms and rested her head on his shoulder, and James, while he did seem a little bit surprised by it, didn't seem to mind in the least.

She soon fell asleep to the rhythmic motion of the swaying carriages and Harry watched James look out the window at the passing snowy countryside and smile, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

He pulled out his wand and again conjured up a slip of parchment and a quill and began to write as carefully as he could. Harry knew that his time in the memory was over as he spied that James' message began:  
"_Lily, I am so sorry-_

The familiar jerk behind his navel struck him once again, and he was lost to the past and arrived again in Godric's Hollow with a clearer understanding of his father.  



	6. Detention

**Lost Letters: Chapter Six  
Detention**

**  
**

So his father had indeed not been as bad as it had looked through Snape's Pensieve. Harry's heart felt ten times lighter just knowing that. His father hadn't been a complete arrogant jerk.

He reflected on that for only moments though. There were still more letters waiting in the jewelry box for him to read. Without stopping to think further on the subject, he grabbed the next letter from the top of the stack and ripped it open.

_"Lily, I like you so much-_

Adrenaline pumped through Harry as he sped back again to the past and to visit his parents.

He hit a boy rather hard and fell backwards into a desk. He definitely felt a solid lurch, and for the briefest of instants, the person he had collided with had seemed not to feel his presence there either, but he then paused and looked around curiously.

Harry's heart began to pound and he could feel the anger rising in his chest when the boy he had fallen on top of turned around to reveal his face. It was Peter Pettigrew…

How was it that Peter could sense he was there? He was supposedly invisible. Peter reached his hand out before him as though trying to feel his way through a dark room and Harry stepped back to avoid his touch. He didn't want filth such as that touching him or even to be in his remote vicinity.

"Settle down everyone!" he heard a familiar voice echo from the front of the room.

He didn't need to see her to know who it was. Everyone in the room sat down instantly at her command and silence filled the classroom.

"Today we will continue our discussion of mammal to botanical transformations, so kindly get out your books, and follow along with me."

Harry was amazed at Professor McGonagall. She was far younger with no visible grey in her hair, and her face had fewer wrinkles.

"That means you too, Mr. Potter," she remarked curtly.

Harry almost sat down at her comment. He laughed when he realized she was talking to Potter senior. A quick survey of classroom found his mother on the very front row listening with rapt attention, which reminded Harry very much of Hermione and his father, sitting with his head propped up on one elbow in a manner that made him seem as though he were literally bored to death. Lupin was sitting on the other side of him, listening politely, Peter was next to him picking his nose as discreetly as possible, and Sirius was sitting with his legs kicked up on the desk with his chair tilted back and his arms crossed in a way that indicated that a look of superiority.

Professor McGonagall opened her mouth, seemingly to say something to Sirius, but promptly forced it shut again. She seemed to be picking her battles. Harry could almost sense that she and his godfather had a long history of wars, likely dating back to his very first year. In a way it lowered his opinion of his transfiguration teacher, because as long as he had known Professor McGonagall, she had never conceded to any student.

When she turned her back to write on the chalkboard, Sirius grinned widely over at James, who caught his eye and flickered a smile back. Lily sighed in frustration at Sirius' obvious immaturity and bore her quill down furiously on her parchment as she took notes.

Harry slid into an empty seat not far away and watched them. He felt a bit foolish, for he was visiting one of his parents' memories only to get a ridiculously hard lesson from McGonagall and watch his parents and their friends either take notes or sit in boredom at her lecture. He was beginning to really feel stupid when he noticed a little piece of paper hit Lupin in the back of the head.

Lupin turned around and his eye seemed to catch sight of something and his face darkened. Harry understood exactly why when he himself turned in his chair.

Snape and a few other gangly-looking Slytherin boys had a row of scrap pieces of balled-up parchment lined up on their desks, ready to be aimed and fired. One of the Slytherin boys sneered and gave a sarcastic wave and Lupin frowned.

Another piece of paper came soaring through the air and struck James who also turned around in his seat to discover the source of the offending balls of parchment. Lily glared at him as though to question why he wanted to start trouble, grunted, and went back to taking her notes.

"They are not," James whispered to Sirius.

He awoke from a slight daze, snorted, and turned around as well to find out what James was whining about.

Another piece of parchment soared through the air and hit his mother in the back of the neck.

"Would you all just stop it!" she screamed as she jumped out of her chair, causing the whole class to stop what they were doing to stare at her.

Professor McGonagall broke the piece of chalk in her hand in a rage that Harry had never even seen her in.

"Detention," she snapped, whipping around to face Lily.

Lily seemed to come to her senses about what she had just done and her face paled. James stood and looked at McGonagall as though she were insane. Lily Evans had never so much as been told she had done wrong by a teacher, let alone had a detention.

"Hey, Snape started-" James began, rising from his seat.

"Detention Potter," she shot at him, causing a reflex within Sirius to defend his best friend. He started to open his mouth to retort, but she cut him off. "Do you want to say something to me Black? As I recall, there is a Quidditch match this Friday and it would be a shame for you to miss it."

Sirius snapped his mouth back shut promptly, shot James a look of apology, and returned almost immediately to a state of angry stupor. It was amazing how he and Professor McGonagall had the oddest way of controlling each other's responses. The Slytherins were nearly doubled over in silent giggles behind them but Professor McGonagall didn't seem to notice.

Harry noticed that his mother looked close to crying. James seemed like he could care less about a detention but was beside himself in fury about Snape. He sat back down nonetheless as silent tears began to flow down Lily's cheeks.

Lupin winced at her tears and handed her a tissue from his book bag which she used to dam up her running mascara with, but she continued to cry. She picked up her quill and tried to go back to taking her notes but her hand shook too hard from her sobbing to get much down.

James put his hand on her shoulder and she looked over to him. She looked awful. Her face was swollen and red and she had already cried all her makeup off. James motioned for her to give him the quill, which she did cautiously, mouthing "What are you doing?"

He took the quill from her hand and the bit of parchment that she was taking notes on and began to write them for her. Sirius raised his eyebrows in surprise but said nothing and a few students looked over at James in surprise: clearly they were not accustomed to a James Potter that took notes under any circumstances.

A tearful smile broadened over her worn and tear-stained face and she lay her head down on his shoulder and watched him write. He craned his neck to kiss her on the top of her head and continued to copy notes on completely vanishing the spine in order to allow for the growth of foliage.

The rest of the class passed by quietly and Harry began to sense a bond growing between the two of them that had not really been there before. After class was over and everyone began to pack up their things, Professor McGonagall held them back.

"I hope you don't have any other pressing engagements. Since this is the last class of the day I see no reason why you can't serve your detentions now. Miss Evans, Professor Flitwick has notified me that he is behind on grading his first years' essays." Lily's face blanched at her remark, but she went on to dish out James' punishment without skipping a beat.

"You Mr. Potter are likely needed down at the Quidditch pitch-" His face glowed with hope until she added "I hear the grass needs to be cut again. Filch should be down there right now, go speak to him. I shall know if you do not. Do not ever interrupt my class again, either of you."

They walked out of the classroom with Harry trailing after them and James began to follow Lily until she pointed out that the Quidditch pitch was on the other side of the grounds and he would need to go the other way.

"Here. Take this," he said, handing her a small mirror.

"What's it-"

Professor McGonagall stuck her head out of the classroom and shouted: "Do I need to walk you both to your destinations?!"

"See you in a bit," he smiled.

Harry knew exactly what the mirror was for. He wasn't sure whether to follow his mother or father, and instead just trailed after his father, thinking that James even by himself was always worth a laugh.

* * *

Their detentions had gone slowly and Harry was beginning to feel a bit bored. Watching his father cut grass with a bizarre old contraption that looked like a rake with a set of magically snapping teeth was not nearly as interesting as he thought it would be.

His mother and father talked the almost the entire time using the mirrors, but most of it was grumbling about what a hag Professor McGonagall was or how terrible their punishments were. James finished trimming the huge expanse of grass just as night began to fall. He had stopped talking to Lily long ago when Professor Flitwick had finally asked Lily why she kept talking to herself.

It was a warm evening and after he put the cutting machine back in its proper shed, he pulled off his sweat-stained shirt and lay down on the grass to look up at the stars beginning to shine on the horizon. Harry thought his father looked so peaceful.

It was funny to Harry that he didn't even know what was coming. He knew that his father would soon marry his mother and have him, and shortly afterwards die. He had died such a young man. It wasn't fair. Harry began to feel tears welling up in his eyes and fought to push them away when a woman's voice called out to James over the lawn.

"Ew! Put your shirt back on!" Lily laughed.

"You like it," he said slyly, winking at her. "Besides, it's hot. Some people weren't fortunate enough to have a detention inside where it's cool."

"I've never had a detention before. I wonder what mum will say," she said frowning.

"I have at least two a week. If she's a good mum like mine, she'll understand that there are just things you need to do," she said very assuredly.

"Like antagonize my teachers?" she asked in chuckling disbelief. "Maybe your mum just got tired of sending Howlers."

"You know, you're right. She hasn't sent one in months. I ought to step it up a notch, give her something to write me about," he said with a grin.

She rolled her eyes and sat down next to him and curled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them.

"Thank you so much for sticking up for me today," she said quietly.

"You're my girl," he said, dismissing her thanks as unnecessary.

"Well, thanks for taking my notes. By the way, you have terrible handwriting," she laughed.

"Gee, thanks. I stretch myself into the realm of note-taking for you and all I get is irritation over my penmanship. See if I ever take notes again," he laughed back sarcastically.

"I don't know that I ever told you this but I really do like you too."

"Well, you ought to. You're my girlfriend," he said simply, sitting up from the grass.

"Well, I can't explain it. You know, you've never really kissed me," she murmured, trying to change the subject and biting her lip playfully.

"Would you like me to kiss you?" he asked in amusement.

"I can't believe you're asking, you are such a-"

His lips interrupted her speech and for a brief moment, there was a feeling of intense, fluttering uncertainty. He reached his hands up to her cheeks and she gently touched his wrists with her hands. They seemed so perfect for each other, as though that moment in time had been already known for decades to some outside force of nature.

Harry began to feel as though he were intruding on a very private moment between his parents and left in the direction of the Gryffindor common room. He felt foolish, for he had nowhere to go until James began to compose the love letter to her. He immediately felt stupid, for he no longer had it, and he quickly realized he had dropped it back in Professor McGonagall's classroom.

A thought occurred to him and he began to wonder if someone could find it and see it. Was the letter real and solid or invisible to the outside world as he was?

He reached the portrait of the Fat Lady and she looked down at him. He couldn't tell whether she could actually see him or not and almost had a heart attack when she gave him a questioning look and told him to give her a password or move along.

"Um, dragon's claw?" he stuttered and she shrugged and the portrait hole swung open. The few people resting in the common room looked over to see who was coming in and gave very curious looks when they saw no one there. They all soon went to bed.

Later Lily came through by herself and went to bed with a content smile on her face. A few minutes after her, James came through with a mug of pumpkin juice and several pies, for they had missed dinner and he was likely very hungry and had gone down to the kitchens.

He sat down in a huge armchair, setting his food on a nearby table and began to write another note, and Harry knew it was time. He didn't even have a chance to look over at what it said before the world around his dissipated into swirling darkness.


	7. Laughter and Lessons

**Lost Letters: Chapter Seven  
Laughter and Lessons**

Harry plummeted onto the floor of his once beautiful home with a crash and stood and shook his head to bring him back to consciousness. He looked up through the massive holes in the ceiling and noticed that dusk was beginning to fall.

In no time, he advanced upon the jewelry box again hungry for more visions of his parents. He pulled out the next one, ripped it open, and thoughtfully prepared himself for another fall into the past.

"_Lily, did you have fun?_

He felt himself being gleefully sucked into the dark portal of his parents' old memories and landing with a "splat" onto muddy ground, dropping the piece of paper into the thick mud.

It was misting lightly and it appeared to be sometime in early summer. The sun was beginning to rise over the Forbidden Forest with a soft glow. Harry dusted the mud from his jeans, or Dudley's jeans, rather, readjusted his glasses, and looked around, completely forgetting the letter on the ground.

He saw them almost immediately, strolling out of the grand entrance to the school: his mother and father, James with a pair of broomsticks in one hand and Lily with a look of uncertainty on her face.

As they came nearer, he began to hear their conversation and he began to laugh.

"So you're sure this whole flying thing is safe?" she asked.

"Yes, for the millionth time, it's completely safe, and I'll catch you if you fall."

"If I fall? Am I going to fall?" she said, the fear rising in her voice.

"_No_!" he said in exasperation. "Didn't you take flying lessons the first year anyway?" he asked curiously.

"Um, I must have missed them," she admitted sheepishly.

"Lily Evans misses nothing when it comes to school, so dish it. Why did you not learn to fly then?"

"I was mortified by the thought of trying something completely foreign in front of everyone, so I faked being sick and got sent to the Hospital Wing. Ok?" she replied in embarrassment.

James gave her an odd look but didn't say anything as they passed their invisible son. He began to follow them to the Quidditch pitch.

"_What_?!" she snapped.

"I didn't say anything," he answered.

"You didn't have to," she said with a small laugh.

"Well, you don't strike me as the type of person that would be afraid of anything," he replied simply.

"Well, to be honest with you, I wasn't afraid of flying, I was really looking forward to it."

"But?"

Lily was blushing like mad, though she seemed to be trying her best to conceal it. James picked up on her embarrassment and he seemed to act as though he were going die if he could not force an answer out of her about why she had refused flying lessons in her first year.

"But what?" he asked again.

"Well, it's embarrassing," she stammered.

"Come on! I'll tell you something deathly humiliating."

"Well, back in first year, I did used to like you a bit. I thought you were handsome for a scrawny kid," she admitted in shame.

The look on James' face at that moment gave Harry the impression that he was going to explode.

"I _knew_ it! I completely knew it!" he exclaimed in triumph.

"Well, just for your information, I started hating you a short time later the first time I saw you hex pimples onto poor Agatha Goldsmith for flirting with you too much," she said, an anger rising in her voice.

"Well, she was annoying," James said defensively before quickly adding "but I haven't done it in a long time!" when he viewed the expression forming on Lily's face.

"Oh well, shall we teach you to do this?"

"No," she snapped.

"What do you mean 'no'?" he asked. "You're the one who wanted to learn to do this for some odd reason."

"You haven't told me anything embarrassing about yourself yet."

"Oh, right."

He put his hand to his face as though he were trying to think of an incident he would be willing to confess to her, and at last looked over at her and smiled.

"Do you remember in our fourth year when Sirius and I were given three months of detentions?"

"Yeah," she said nervously, afraid to really know but finding herself rather interested.

"Well, that was the longest stint that either of us ever did for detention, and it was for also one of the best pranks we ever pulled. We snuck into the Slytherin common room _really_ late at night. Sirius knew where it was because his entire family is it in, so we got the password from Nealy Bulstrode after we got her drunk and we just let ourselves in late one night.

Rather than risk getting caught as Sirius and James, we took a nip of Polyjuice Potion and transformed into two hags in Slytherin house so that no one would ask questions, and unless of course the two broads we became were sitting up late, it was a perfect plan. We even went so far as to get some girls nightgowns and hair net thingies or whatever it is you call them."

"Ok, that's not embarrassing."

"Well, it gets worse. We were there to redecorate the common room a lovely shade of pink, along with all the robes in the fresh laundry bin. And we did a great job, we really did. As we were walking back to the Gryffindor common room, basking in our own brilliance and discussing the looks that would come across the faces of the Slytherins when they woke in the morning to discover a common room that a little girl wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, we were stumbled upon by Flich.

Naturally, we were sent to Dumbldore's office, still as the two nameless Slytherin girls mind you. By this time it was early morning, and after Dumbledore gave us a month of detention, we transformed back into ourselves. When he found out that we had made an illegal Polyjuice Potion, he tacked on another two. We were lucky he didn't report it to the authorities. He's a great man."

"Well, I still don't see what's embarrassing."

"I'm getting there. Well, when we were dismissed from his office, it was early in the morning and students were starting to come down for breakfast. We hadn't even really thought about it, but we were still wearing girls' nightgowns and stupid barrette things in our hair. It honestly wasn't so bad for me, because the few people we passed thought we were just pulling some bizarre prank, but we ran across Allyson Marchbanks, who by the way Sirius was completely in love with back then.

That was the longest walk back to the common room I ever took," he added with a nostalgic smile.

Lily seemed too deep in thought for words, but then burst out laughing as soon as the story seemed to sink in a bit.

"So that's why 'giggle' Allyson called Sirius 'giggle' a cross-dresser!" she was roaring with laughter and was nearly on the ground for laughing so hard.

"Well, you don't have to laugh _that_ hard," he replied huffily. "I'm thankful I didn't pass you in the hallway. For days afterwards I held my breath and prayed that you would never find out about it, but I guess it's too late now."

Her hysterical laughing had subsided a bit and she seemed to be trying to collect herself.

"Do you want to learn how to fly now?" he asked, seemingly regretting that he had ever told her that story.

"Um, ok," she answered nervously, still releasing small giggles which were quickly giving way to fear.

"If you're so scared of it, then why do you want to learn?" he asked.

"Well, because you seem to like it a lot, and it seems like a very liberating experience. I've never even so much as touched a broomstick though," she replied sheepishly.

"Well, let's dig in then, shall we?" he replied with a growing smile on his face.

Harry watched with a half smile over the next half hour or so while James tried to explain grips and wind currents to her. He was surprised to find out that he actually learned something about diving _under_ the wind that he would definitely have to try when he got back to Hogwarts the following year.

He smiled a rather pained smile when he thought of it. That was the first thing that he had ever learned from his father, his dad, and he wondered if it would be the last.

Are you ready to go up?" James asked excitedly.

"Um, I guess so," she answered, clearly wishing to keep her feet firmly on the ground.

"Here, I'll ride along with you at first to hold you steady and keep you from falling off."

"Ok," she answered back, a little hint of relief covering her face.

Harry watched expectantly as they mounted one of the brooms James had brought out, wondering how his mother was going to fare at flying. In the blink of an eye, they were off, and Lily's screams could immediately be heard echoing around the grounds.

Between James' laughing and Lily's screaming, Harry was certain that they were going to lose their balance pretty soon. Luckily they hadn't gone very high up by the time Lily started thrashing to be let down and socked James straight in the face with her elbow on accident, causing him to pitch backwards off the broom and fall ten feet down to the grass below with a thud and a bloody nose.

Being left flying on a broomstick by herself made her scream louder and Harry began to feel nervous because she seemed really, seriously frightened. But then the oddest thing happened. She seemed to realize that though she was left alone, she still hadn't fallen or zoomed off into space, rather, she was just suspended in midair, drifting slowly off to the left as she leaned down to look at the ground in fear.

James quickly got from the ground and wiped the blood from his face. He seemed rather panicky, and for a brief moment was scanning the ground to see where she had fallen, and when he noticed that she hadn't he looked up to see her clinging to the broom with white knuckles and looking very pale indeed.

"See?!" he laughed. "You're ok!"

"_How do I get down_?" she screamed.

"What do you want down for? You're doing great! You've even got the right grip, even if you are gripping rather hard."

She seemed to come to her senses a bit and relaxed a fraction on the broom.

"Why is it that whenever we do something, one of us always ends up with a bloody face?" he shouted up to her.

He quickly snatched up the other broomstick and came to her side in the air and brushed a lock of hair that had fallen into her face that she hadn't noticed before.

Harry could barely make out what they were saying, but it sounded something along the lines of "You're fine, I promise."

Harry watched over the next hour as his mother seemed to master the art of flying. She wasn't a natural at it, but he had definitely seen worse. He didn't even want to admit it to himself, but she was better than Ron.

By the end of the morning, the sun was hanging high overhead and a few students were coming outside to enjoy the temperate weather. They called it quits for the day and walked back into the Great Hall to get some breakfast with Harry tagging invisibly along.

"Morning Prongs," Sirius yawned, stretching his arms and looking over at the pair of them with one open eye.

"Where have you been? Dumbledore was looking for you this morning in the common room, says he wants to talk to us about something. It was odd, it was the first time I ever saw him in there."

"That is weird. I was just out having a bit of flying time," James answered.

"I'm going to talk to Cassandra about something, can you excuse me?" Lily asked.

"Anytime," he answered and she frowned lovingly at him as she walked over to the Hufflepuff table.

James sat down on the other side of Lupin and Harry inched his way over to them.

"Hey Moony? Can I borrow a bit of parchment and a quill?" James asked.

Lupin looked up from over his book and replied simply, "It's in my bag, help yourself."

Harry begin to sense that his stay in this memory was over, and realized all too soon that he had abandoned another letter and forgot about it.

James quickly began to scribble "_Lily, did you have fun?_" and Harry knew that it was over.


	8. A Walk into the Woods

**Lost Letters: Chapter Eight  
A Walk into the Woods**

**  
**

Harry fell with a thump onto the filth-covered floor and rubbed his elbows. The trips were beginning to take their toll on him, for all over his arms he could see darkening bruises from where he had collided with one thing or another. But as long as there were more letters in his mum's old jewelry box, the injuries made no difference.

He hungrily stormed over to the delicate porcelain box and seized the next letter and opened it.

_"Lily, are you really going to-"_

And with the thundering sound of a disappearing present around him, he was tossed into his parents' past like a weak rag doll.

He had fallen on top of someone and smacked into the floor of a forest. He was just beginning to stand up and brush himself off when he heard the voice of the person that he had collided with.

"What was that?"

"What? What was what?"

Harry stood to look his mother straight in the eye. She was looking at him, right at him. In spite of the looming darkness and setting sun overhead,

"What was what Lily?" James asked from behind her.

She gave Harry a curious look and he felt his heart skip a beat.

"Mum?" he whispered, dropping the little note in his excitement.

"I don't know. I guess I'm just losing my mind." She answered with a slight giggle. "I thought I felt something bump into me, and it didn't feel like your wandering hands either."

Harry huffed out a sigh of despair. She had seen him and felt him, sort of, but had shrugged it off. Yet in a way it lifted his spirits: that was the closest that he had come to his mother that he could remember.

"My _wandering _hands?" James asked in disbelief. "What kind of lecher do you think I am?" he laughed.

"You know what I meant," she replied flatly.

"Yeah, I guess so," he countered, sounding a bit hurt but her shortness.

"I'm sorry James, I am," she apologized.

They began to slowly walk and Harry glanced around before following them. They were walking the edge of the Forbidden Forest and the night was slowly approaching.

"You've seemed really stressed the last couple of days Lily. What's going on? It's not me is it?" James asked with a touch of panic in his voice. "I mean, I've been really good the last couple of days and I haven't even had a detention since the last one I served for McGonagall with you and-"

"James?" she asked with a smile on her face.

"Yeah?" he answered quickly.

"Shut up," she laughed aloud as she shook her head. "No, it's not you. Well, it's kind of you. It's hard to explain. It's kind of why I asked you to take a walk with me because I didn't want to try and explain it at the dinner table with Sirius making fart sounds with his armpits."

James looked wistfully into the night air, seemingly thinking about the fun in making noises of flatulence with various crevices of his body before he snapped out of his stupor.

"Right, right, so?" he asked.

"Well, do you remember last winter when you pulled me out of the fountain and all?"

"How am I supposed to forget that?" he chuckled.

"Well, I was out that night because I had no idea what to do with my life, no direction or anything."

"Yeah, I remember that. Which reminds me Lily, I need to talk to you about that too, about where we're going after we graduate in a few weeks," James said hesitantly.

"Well, let me go first," she begged. "Professor McGonagall held me after class a few days ago and-"

"She didn't give you another detention? You're too delicate for detention! I'll go straighten her out right-"

"No! She didn't give me another detention!" cried Lily in vexation. "Let me finish."

James shut his mouth and gave a slight grimace of a smile and allowed her to keep talking. Harry smiled at his reaction, because he could vaguely remember the vision he had of his parents a long ago in the Penseive, the way that he would have sworn Sirius was the only one who could properly shut James up. It seemed as though his mother had joined the exclusive club as well.

"Well, she offered me a position James. They need spell breakers over in Sri Lanka. There are all kinds of ruby mines over there that have been heavily guarded by spells for centuries, and the money I could make would be phenomenal. I told her I would think about it, but honestly James, she has pulled a lot of strings to get me such a job, and I don't see how I could turn her down," Lily finished, tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

"Well, then what's wrong with that? You'd be great for that job! You are so smart Lily… what's wrong with taking a job in Sri Lanka?"

"It would be permanent," she stated bluntly.

James' face fell and Harry looked at his mother in shock. Of course he knew that something must have happened for her not to have gone to Sri Lanka, he was living proof of it, but it still came as a slap in the face to him as much as it did James.

"Well, wow, um, I don't know what to say. I don't know. Do you want to go? I mean, do you-"

"It sounds like the perfect job for me. It sounds like such fun but honestly I don't know James. I really have no idea. To tell you the truth, I was kind of hoping to spend a bit of time with you after we graduated and well-"

She began to cry and James looked terrified and didn't seem to know what to do other than nervously try to console her. He looked like someone had died and Harry couldn't even relate to what he must have been feeling.

"What was it that you had to tell me?" she sniffed, backing away from him.

"Well, um, Dumbledore asked me to do something special after Hogwarts. There's a dark wizard rising again, worse than Grindelwald in the forties, and I have been asked to be part of an organization to help get rid of him."

Lily stared at him unblinking and James stood looking down into her face, waiting for an answer.

"You know, Grindelwald, he murdered-"

"I know who he is James. I have to be the only person to have ever listened in History of Magic Class," she said without emotion or feeling in her voice.

"So, what do you think?" James asked nervously.

"Does this mean it's over?" she asked, the sound of hurt rising in her voice again. "I mean, am I going to go to Sri Lanka and get a letter back telling me that you've been killed or tortured or-"

"No Lily. I don't know what it was that I wanted to explain to you tonight. When you told me you needed to talk to me, I was happy because I wanted to tell you, ask you- I don't know," he said very finally.

"No, what?" she asked.

"I guess this is it then," he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

"James-"

"I can't ask you to turn McGonagall down. I can't ask you to put your life on hold for me. I can't ask you that Lily," he said, tremendous pain filling his words.

"James?" she cried.

"Let's just go back to the castle and forget it, ok?" he demanded.

"Why are you acting like this? I just-"

"Drop it Lily," he snapped.

Unspeakable tears began to flow down her face and James seemed to be eying each and every one with hate and fury. Her tears seemed to be pushing him close to tears himself, and rather than shut her up completely, he gently reached out his hand for hers.

"Let's just go back up to the castle and talk about this later, ok? Please don't cry. I'm sorry."

She pulled herself together a bit and wiped the pained and salty tears from her chin and tried to smear them completely from her face.

"Ok," she said weakly.

"Lily, please don't be upset. We have a few weeks until graduation to decide anyway, right?"

"Right," she answered in a way that expressed that she clearly didn't believe him.

Harry followed them as they walked hand in hand back to the castle in silence. They seemed to be grieving and Harry felt so bad for the both of them, but really felt none of the worry that was present between them. They were going to get together anyway.

They walked straight past the Great Hall for dinner was almost over by that time anyway and straight back to the common room.

After they had passed through the portrait hole, Lily gave James a forced weak smile and told him that she was going to post a letter to her mother and go to bed.

"Goodnight," James smiled as he stooped over to kiss her briefly on the lips.

Color flushed in her cheeks and she looked back at James when he pulled away, searching him for something, anything…

"Goodnight James."

She trudged up the stairs to her common room and just as she shut the door someone called out from across the common room: "Prongs!"

Both Harry and James snapped their heads to see Sirius sitting over by the window next to Peter and Lupin.

"Huh?" James answered half-heartedly.

"We have to come up with a good last prank. We can't just graduate with no last big prank to our names. And think about it, what are they going to do, put us in detention for a year? Ha!" Sirius shouted.

"I'm not really in the mood right now; I'll figure something out tomorrow, unless you come up with something great by yourself," James said mechanically.

James began to walk over to the stairs to go to his own dormitory but halted when Sirius asked: "What's your problem Prongs?"

"I'm just- just tired. I'll talk to you in the morning," he said softly.

"Suit yourself," Sirius said, shoving a quill behind his ear and looking at a piece of paper that looked oddly like the Marauder's Map.

Harry watched as James walked up the stairs, each step weighing heavier and heavier until he swept into the room at the top of the stairs. Harry stood there watching the three over by the couch, wondering which one if any of them were going to try to cheer his father up, for he clearly needed it. After a few minutes Harry began to feel angry that none of them seemed to want to bother, but at last Lupin stood up and said that he would be right back.

He followed Lupin up the stairs, thankful for his willingness to be a good friend and was on his heels right as he entered the room.

James was sitting on his bed with his head in his hands and little tufts of his unruly hair poking out from between his fingers, looking down at the floor in seeming disbelief.

When Lupin nervously knocked on the door, James didn't seem to take any notice.

"What do you want Moony?" he asked quietly.

"You seem sort of, down," he prodded.

"You could say that," he said with a laugh, still not looking up from the floor.

"Well, what's wrong? Did you and Lily have a row? She acted a little upset when you both came in and-"

"No Moony," he finished. "Moony? Remus, I think I really love her," he said, looking up at last.

Lupin raised his eyebrows and slowly walked over to James. He seemed ready to tell him that he was probably just lusting after her like he had for the past seven years but James shook his head without Lupin ever having to say a word.

"No, I do love her. I want her to be with me, marry me. It sounds so stupid, but I really mean it and no, I'm not overreacting," James said before Lupin could say anything.

He sat down on the bed across from James and watched him rub his hands through his hair, ruffling it in confusion.

"Well, what makes you think that?" Lupin asked warily.

"It's the way I feel every time that I'm around her. The other day when I was teaching her to ride a broom, it was just so funny," James said with a reflective smile. "She's just smarter than me, and that's saying a lot because that's hard for me to admit, but she doesn't rub it in my face or anything. And when she smiles it makes me smile like some idiot and I can't think of anything to say to her while she's smiles because she's so pretty and I can't stop staring at her. She is so much like me in a few ways, the right ways, you know? And I just-"

"Prongs? James, you're rambling." Lupin said softly with a look of amusement on his face.

"See?! See what I mean? She makes me act like a fool; she has taken over my mind."

"Well, you always were a fool, but that's beside the point. So why don't you just tell her? I don't think she's going to kick you in the crotch like she did back in third year again," Lupin said, trying to hold back his laughter.

James winced at the memory that Remus mentioned and Harry had to laugh. His mother must have seriously fought him off hard.

"Well, I want to tell her. I was going to tell her tonight, but I can't anymore," James said with a deep expression of thought crossing his face.

"Why?"

"It's hard to explain. But it just wouldn't be fair to her," James replied.

Remus seemed to sense that if James wanted to explain it, he would have explained it in that moment, so he let it drop. There was a sense of disappointment in Remus' face, like he desperately wanted to say something.

"I'll just go back downstairs. Come down if you feel like it. Sirius does have some good ideas up his sleeve; I know that you'd love them."

"I might," James gave Lupin an expression of gratitude as he got up to leave.

Harry remained in the room after he left and watched his father. Harry was surprised at how torn up he really seemed about her. He knew that his father loved his mother; it was obvious from the old pictures that he had of the pair of them, but it was something totally different to see it demonstrated before him.

"What have I done?" James whispered softly to himself as he lie down on his bed and stretched his arms above his head. Harry watched as James watched the ceiling, walked around the room a few times, and sat back down on his bed.

"What have I done?" he said a little louder.

He reached over, fumbled in the drawer next to his bed for a quill and a bit of parchment and pulled it out. Harry was getting ready to get tossed out of the memory again when James paused. He reached back into the drawer and pulled out Sirius' penknife.

He touched it, pulled out the blade, and looked at it carefully.

Harry was about to scream, thinking that James couldn't possibly be that depressed but breathed a sigh of relief as he began to carve something in the bottom of the bedpost. It was too small for Harry to make out without peering down to look at it.

James tossed the knife back into the drawer and began to write the letter just as Harry read the inscription "Lily, I love you" written in the hard wood of the bedpost and the scratching of the quill on the paper sent Harry soaring forwards again into the future.


	9. Graduation and Goodbyes

**Lost Letters: Chapter Nine**

**Graduation and Goodbyes**

Harry landed hard onto the broken floorboards of his abandoned, broken-down old house and lie on the ground for a moment, absorbing the pain of his fall. He was on the floor for a good few minutes; taking in everything he had seen of his parents in the last few hours and looking up through the holes in the ceiling at the fast-approaching stars and moon.

A slight breeze gusted in through the shattered window and he heard a note of a song from the next room and sat up slightly to listen for more, but none came. Standing nervously on the shoddy floor, he abandoned the music box to allow his broken and bruised body a moment to rest before diving into another memory in the pursuit of the maker of that one little note.

He felt the wind blow overhead again and the same little note rang out again, once, twice, three times before stopping again. It was coming from the room directly across from his parents'. Sidestepping a pile of rubble, he sneaked back through the doorway and into the hallway. The room across the hall had clearly once had a door, but it was lying sideways from the bottom hinge and exposing a little of the room behind it.

His heart began to pound heavily in his chest and his mouth was all too suddenly dry. He clumsily pushed the door over to the side and stepped in. The moment his foot touched the floor on the other side, he realized exactly where he was. It was his old room.

There were scorch marks all over everything: the walls, the furniture, and there were shattered glass and a few drifting feathers (presumably from a pillow) floating around the room. There was no roof over the section of the room in which he was standing, and as he looked down, he noticed that there wasn't much of the floor left either.

How the house, especially his own little room remained standing was a mystery to him, for it looked like a slight breeze might see it blown over, but he assumed it must have had something to do with wizarding architecture.

Something about the room disturbed him. As he scanned the room a second time, his eyes came to fall on a crib: his old crib. It looked brand new, with shiny wooden rails and a perfectly arranged blanket.

Carefully, he walked across the bits of flooring that were left and made his way over to his very first bed. There was a small, stuffed deer with a wind up tail. A sudden flash of a memory hit him. The deer played music, it played songs. He could vaguely remember sleeping with such a thing that played a song, but what was it? He tried in vain for a few moments to recall what the lullaby had been, how it had gone, or the way it was sung, but nothing came to him.

He reached out to touch it and was overcome with emotion. The little deer was as new as the day that it had been given to him. He looked at the crib that it was lying it, and a new thought occurred to him.

This was where he was when it happened, and he looked down at the spare bit of floor that was left and nearly choked when he realized that it was likely the very spot where his mother had died.

She was likely murdered where he was standing just now. The thought bore deep into him like a bullet and tears began to flow down his face. As he clutched the railing of his crib, the very crib where he had been found by Hagrid, he noticed a glint of something, wedged between two joined pieces of wood at the corner. It was a single red hair.

He pulled it out from the place where it had rested for the last fifteen years and cried harder. A ring, a hair, and a box of old letters were all he had left of his mother. He had had so many losses in the past few years: Cedric Diggory, Sirius, and now recently Dumbledore, but now this felt like he was losing his parents all over again.

He got a cold chill that spread all over his body and he began to feel frightened. He righted himself, shaking and deeply chilled, and staggered backwards from the room and fell backwards into the hallway. The wind was beginning to pick up and rush through the orifices of the house, whipping at him and taunting him mercilessly. He toppled backwards down the stairs, catching himself on the railing and managing to push off it and back to the wall before the railing crashed down to the landing below.

He felt clammy and shaky. What had just come over him? He tried to brush it off.

"I need to calm down. It's an empty old house," he told himself.

But a little voice in the back of his head whispered "No, it's your old house."

He felt slightly sick to his stomach and wanted to be away from the place of ruined destruction that he found himself standing in. Very assuredly he walked back through the splintered door to his parents' room and looked at the open jewelry box. He reached his hand in, extracted the next letter, and with a sad sigh, tore it open.  
_  
"I am going to miss you, just so you know-"_

A thundering whooshing sound ripped over him and he found himself pulled from the wreckage that had once been his home and into happier times.

He fell into a crowd of people and managed to catch himself on the shoulder of a young man before he could hit the ground with a face-first splat as the letter fluttered from his grasp and into the crowd of students, none of whom seemed to see it.

"Hey, who hit me?" the young man asked, turning around as he did so.

It was Remus Lupin, and he was rather worn-looking and adorned with various scratches and cuts which told Harry that a full moon must have been not long before.

"What are you talking about Moony?" Peter whispered nervously from behind Harry.

"Yeah, what _are _you on about?" James asked from his position a few people away from Peter.

Remus gave a slight grimace with his face and looked around at the people near him, all of whom shrugged, rolled their eyes, or gave innocent looks back in Lupin's direction.

"Nothing," he replied carefully and uncertainly.

Harry looked around from where he stood. He was among a crowd of students, all of whom were standing in a very deliberate-looking formation. They were all dressed in black satin robes and everyone seemed to be wearing different colored sashes.

It hit Harry immediately. He was at his parents' graduation. His father, Lupin, and Peter all had on gold and maroon sashes over their necks, and Lupin was standing next to a rather surly looking girl wearing the tell-tale colors of the Slytherin silver and green. They all seemed so overdressed. Harry looked at all the adornments of the students and smirked. It was likely that he would be dressed in a similar fashion in two years, but thankfully that was still two years away.

He spotted Sirius at the very front of the first row of students, his mother was two rows behind him, a few rows later was where he and Lupin stood, and James and Peter were behind him.

Harry turned around to glance at his father and couldn't help but notice how worried and upset he looked.

"Likely because he thinks she's leaving, that's probably it," Harry thought to himself.

They were all standing in the Great Hall behind where the staff table usually sat. There was a deep blue curtain blocking the group of students away from the rest of the hall. Harry stood around bored for a few moments until he heard the magnified voice of Dumbledore on the other side of the curtain, addressing a large crowd of people judging from the murmuring just beyond the shade of the blue drape.

All of a sudden, the curtain swung open and Harry felt exposed for a brief moment. There was loud clapping, and Dumbledore began to speak.

"Students, you go out into the world on this day no longer my students, but always my friends. Each and every one of you…"

Harry noticed as Dumbledore looked over the crowd of students that Harry was standing in that his eyes seemed to rest a bit longer on a few familiar faces: Snape's included. Yet he continued on into a nice address, though neither flowery nor long, about how one should stick closely to his or her friends, the power of knowledge, and the need for unity in the face of darkening days.

Harry felt a slight tug at his heart wondering if his parents and Sirius and Lupin were actually heeding this remark and glanced over the crowd of students. Very few seemed to be listening to what was being said at all. One rather skinny Hufflepuff boy was picking his nose, while the Ravenclaw girl next to him seemed to be falling asleep.

"Listen you fools," Harry hissed at them, angry that no one seemed to be regarding a speech that could perhaps one day do them a favor by maybe saving their lives if they cared to remember it.

Harry felt a growing sense of despair as he watched the graduation ceremony get under way. He watched as Sirius was the first to walk across the stage and how he took an obnoxious bow before accepting Dumbledore's handshake, a few minutes later he watched his mother, beaming proudly as walked across the stage while a list of her accomplishments (a rather long list including everything from Charms club to Head Girl) was read, then Lupin, Peter, and finally his father.

Harry noticed that as James shook Dumbledore's hand, they seemed to have made a sort of unspoken agreement about something. Both men looked each other dead in the eye, nodded, smiled politely, and then allowed the ceremony to go on as the person behind James walked across the stage.

After a time the ceremony was complete amid gales of applause and wildly bright camera flashes. Harry got lost among the throngs of students ready to leave the Great Hall and greet loved ones and say last goodbyes to friends. He finally found his mother and stuck as close to her as he could.

As everyone began to exit the Great Hall, Harry saw a hand come from over his shoulder to grab onto Lily.

"Where do you think you're going?" James laughed at her sarcastically.

"I was looking for you, you _idiot_," she retorted, even more sarcastically.

"Well," James all of a sudden seemed to be at a loss for words. "I guess this is goodbye," he said finally.

"You know it isn't," she answered quickly to him. "I gave you my address and I'll be coming home for a few holidays," she added, sounding as though she were trying to convince herself of something.

James said nothing but continued to look her straight in the eye with the most intense, mournful look Harry had ever seen. James really seemed to be hurting. He also noticed that she couldn't look him in the eye without looking away nervously every so often. She couldn't really still be going to Sri Lanka?

"I love you Lily," James said sadly.

"I love you too James," she said, her voice sounding as though it were filling up with raging tears.

"Lily, come on! You've got to hurry and come home for dinner before you leave! Your sister is bringing her fiancé, and we don't want to make a bad impression on him!" her mother called from behind. Harry wanted to kick his grandmother in the shins for the way she always seemed to interrupt moments between his mother and father…

"I'll write you all the time!" she said firmly, hugging him tightly enough to crush his spine.

All James seemed capable of doing was to pat her on the back in seeming disbelief that he was losing the only girl he ever loved in a few moments. She looked up to him, kissed him on the bottom of the chin, and wiped tears from her cheeks that were just beginning to fall before stepping away from him. He kissed her on the forehead, but he still seemed to be away in his own world, apart from the fact that Lily was leaving in a matter of a few seconds.

"Bye then," he said uncomfortably.

She nodded tearfully as she turned back to her mother and father.

"Bye Lily," he called after her rather tensely.

She looked back but didn't seem to be able to say anything.

Harry watched along with his father as his mother walked away. James thought it was forever, and though Harry knew it wasn't, a huge part of him couldn't help but feel badly for his father.

"Hey Prongs, are you alright?" Sirius asked timidly from behind them.

"Great," was all James could manage to get out without choking.

"Hey, well, your mum is looking for us," he continued.

"Right," James turned to follow Sirius and they quickly met up with a rather long-faced Lupin and happily bouncing Peter.

* * *

Later that day James was sitting up in his room with Lupin on the floor perusing through a book and Sirius on the bed with the job ads spread all about him as though he had made a nest for himself. James was twirling a quill around and around in his hand and staring at nothing. The only noticeable sound came from a toilet flush down the hall and soon enough, Peter came traipsing into the room readjusting his belt.

"What's wrong with the lot of you?" he asked ignorantly.

"Well, I nothing is really wrong with me," Sirius began "but James just lost the girl of his dreams and Remus just lost his first love in case you haven't noticed," he tacked on sarcastically, causing both James to glare at him and Lupin to look frightened.

"What do you mean I lost my first love, I don't-"

"You lost school mate. School has always been your passion," Sirius shrugged. "I speak only the truth."

James absent-mindedly pulled a spare slip of parchment from his desk drawer and poised the quill over it for some time.

"It works better if you actually put the quill on the parchment, Prongs," Sirius cried in exasperation, causing another venomous look from James.

It took James such a long time to just scratch out the phrase:

_"I am going to miss you, just so you know-"_

Harry smirked to himself as he realized he had dropped another letter just as he felt himself being squeezed back through the gateway to his own time, more depressed than when he had left.**  
**


End file.
